List of municipalities of Finland in which Finnish is not the sole official language

This list contains all Finnish cities and municipalities where Swedish at the local level has an official status.

Introduction

In Finland, 90.0 percent of the population and 5.4 percent of Finnish Swedish speaking ( 31 December 2009) as their mother tongue. Both languages ​​are official languages ​​. At local level, a municipality may be Finnish, Swedish or bilingual. The Finnish language law, according to them is bilingual, when both languages ​​each of at least 8 percent of the population or at least 3000 persons are spoken as a mother tongue. A previously bilingual community retains its status until the share has fallen below 6 percent. However, a municipality may decide to maintain bilingualism even if the share has fallen to below 6 percent. Lohja is the only municipality that makes use of this special scheme. The 3000 -person rule was introduced as the proportion of Swedish-speaking inhabitants of Turku ( around 9000 people) fell below 6 percent. In addition, the 3000 -person rule ( around 6000 Swedish-speaking inhabitants ) is considered currently in Vantaa; in the other communities results in bilingualism from the percentage.

For the autonomous province of Åland (Finnish Ahvenanmaa ) the language law does not apply. The entire province is monolingual Swedish-speaking.

Under the current classification are valid until 2012 of the 342 Finnish municipalities Swedish- 19 (of which 16 in Åland ). 30 communities are bilingual, of which 12 mostly Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking majority 18. The remaining 292 municipalities are monolingual Finnish speakers.

The Swedish-speaking areas of focus next to Åland on the western coast of Ostrobothnia in the south coast of the provinces of Uusimaa and Eastern Uusimaa, as well as the archipelago of Varsinais- Suomi.

List

(S = monolingual Swedish-speaking, SF = Swedish-speaking majority, FS = majority of Finnish speakers )

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